


The Light of Other Days

by lost_loves



Category: Hannibal (TV), The X-Files
Genre: AU, F/M, Scully is Du Maurier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2015-06-26
Packaged: 2018-04-06 06:15:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4211208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lost_loves/pseuds/lost_loves
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All her life she has found herself in the thrall of dangerous men.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Light of Other Days

"The traumatized are unpredictable because we know we can survive." Dr Bedelia Du Maurier

* * *

  
All her life she has found herself in the thrall of dangerous men.

Men whose touch makes her shiver. Whose gaze makes her want to lay her life at their feet. Who offer so much but take so much more.

The most dangerous of all is the man who hid his threat beneath a cocky smile and a bad tie. He taught her to believe and in exchange he took her career, her family, her children. With every kiss he takes the breath inside her and replaces it with his own.

She lives for him as much as for herself. When she pretends she is not watching she loves to see his soft smile, his eyes that regard her with faint astonishment that she is still there, sixteen years later; that there is someone who has not left him.

Once he is pardoned they drive to Baltimore to start their new life. They have already found a flat, office space, furniture. The radio is on the blink and all she can hear is the crackle of sunflower seeds and the whirr of the air conditioner and hope, hope, hope.

She gets them Chinese to eat on the hardwood floors of their new apartment. (The only furniture that has arrived is the bed and he suggests that they stay at a motel for the night, but she has seen enough motels). She takes longer than she means to because on the way back she passes a tobacconist with fish tanks in the window and stops to buy a new castle. The coating on the old one is peeling and soon there will be nothing left but an empty shell. She is worried the rubble will be toxic.

She cannot conceal the smirk on her face, the knowledge that she has bought him a perfect gift, that his eyes will light up with surprise and delight and hope, hope, hope.

But when she enters the apartment his eyes are dull and frosted. His shirt is covered in blood. It has pooled on the hardwood floors; she suspects it will drip down to the apartment below. The cigarette butt left smouldering is a note saying _You’ll be next._

She insists that the hospital monitors him for a heart rate, however minute, but this time he does not come back to life. She drives to New York City without stopping. He told her about the bank account many years ago, after a few beers and under the stars. _If you ever have to run, there’s more than enough in there. Do it right and no one will be able to find you._

 _But what about you?_ she had asked. _How will you find me?_

_If you have to use it, I won’t be in any state to come looking._

She stands over a sink in an expensive hotel room (the bank account allows for extravagances) and massages the bleach into her scalp. It burns. She thinks this is fitting, that you should not be able to wash a life away without some pain.

She does not look in the mirror until the next morning, when she regards her new self and thinks she looks anaemic and haunted but also strangely beautiful.

* * *

She pays extra so that her psychology degree is from the same graduating class as his. She thinks he would have laughed at the name she has chosen, a name worthy of the silly historic romances her sister read or those videos that weren’t his. But she wants to get as far away as possible from her old self and the name, the hair, the luxurious clothes from a Fifth Avenue boutique, help her play the character she has created.

She does not know why she returns to Baltimore, except that it is where he last lived and where her mother once lived and, damn it, she is not going to let them scare her off.

She sets herself up in a huge house with hardwood floors and art and nothing that reminds her of her former life. She finds it cold, this house, even though it is still summer. She can feel ice settling around her heart.

She takes a few patients, not for the money but for the distraction. She finds psychiatry a relief after a career spent cutting people up. Sometimes she dares to hope she can help someone, can do some good.

But then the one constant in her life returns and like putting on a pair of well-worn shoes, of which she no longer has any, she finds herself under the spell of another dangerous man. One of these men led her to abandon a career in medicine and join the FBI, and another kept her so close that her world shrunk to nothing but him, him, him. This new man speaks genteel words in clipped tones. He intrigues her because like her, he must work to appear human; like her, he is missing something crucial. And what harm can it do, she thinks. She has already lost everything.

She finds him a satisfying distraction. She does not know what he sees in her, but she is only slightly surprised when he leads her to murder.

She has killed before from fear and anger. Now she mostly feels curiosity. She wants to know what it is to end a life intimately, cruelly; to look evil in the eye and not cower. Cowering seems pointless. She no longer has anything to fear from evil.

As she stands in the bathroom afterwards, shivering while he wipes the blood from her face, she knows that this man cannot be _him_ , cannot even come close. He cannot spare the breath to make her whole again. But he burns with ice-cold fire, and she can feel so little that she will allow his flames to engulf her and watch as they burn her skin.

This is how it always begins: they burn bright and she follows their light like a thing transfixed. She never realises until too late how dangerous they are. But she survives. She pats the embers down, spits ashes from her mouth, and stands up and walks on.

She lets him out and turns back into her cold, lonely house, and pours herself a glass of wine to drink by the fire. She no longer needs her other patients, but she will keep him on. For now.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from "The Light of Other Days" by Thomas Moore.


End file.
